I care about crime and how we fight it (From Worcester News)

I care about crime and how we fight it

8:00am Thursday 2nd July 2009

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SIR – Jim Evans’ attack on me (Letters, June 20) is just plain weird.

I care about crime and therefore how we fight it. I cited the recent Campbell collaboration research which suggests that CCTV is not the cure-all many people assume. What if CCTV is an expensive waste in many cases? Given the cost, that’s an important civic question.

Mr Evans makes not the slightest attempt to refute this research. Instead, he attacks me on the spurious grounds of my “present location” and my alleged “allegiance” to left-wing news. Actually, I read lots of newspapers, Jim. Apparently I’m a “metropolitan liberal” (a label I’ll gladly accept) and apparently this means I believe that ideally there’d be “no policing of anything but race crimes” and “the entire Third World would have a perfect right to arrive here and lord it over us without ordinary British people having any control over their so-called democratic country”... wow, someone has issues!

My sole point was that if CCTV isn’t that effective in certain situations then the money might be better spent on other means of crime prevention.

So how you got to the idea that I think we’d be better off in some kind of anarchic, lawless state is beyond me.

Maybe I’ll take up Jim’s parochial, illiberal banner. Send them all home, that’s what I say.

Bob Churchill,
London.

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